


the greatness of a man's power

by alternatedoom



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Angst, Blood, Fuck Or Die, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Non-Consensual Touching, Warcraft Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5279966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alternatedoom/pseuds/alternatedoom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lor'themar puts duty first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the greatness of a man's power

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the World of Warcraft kink meme. Prompt was: "Fuck or die scenario. Rommath would rather be killed but Lor'themar is like, fuck that I want to live, so he rips open Rommath's formal robes and pushes him to the ground and tops. In my headcanon Rommath is kind of broken and doesn't really care about anything, so he only puts up a half-hearted fight."

"Well, then," Rommath says, and he sits down on the floor, puts his elbows on his knees and tugs the mask that covers the lower half of his face down below his chin, observing the scene outside as Halduron gets... something done to him by the succubi. Lor'themar and Rommath can't quite see the ranger-general. Too many succubi in the way. But Halduron is moaning like they're either slowly torturing him to death or he's enjoying the longest and most intense orgasm of his life. Rommath purposefully ignores the two Sayaad sitting apart on the steps, who watch them a ways away from the shimmering, sickly-green barrier.

"That's all you have to say? 'Well then'? You heard what it said." Lor'themar passes a hand an inch from the inside of the bubble. The barrier is strong and glowing, and he can feel the fel energy coming off it. He punches it suddenly, without really thinking the action through, but of course nothing happens, and pain flares in his knuckles more from the burn of the magic than the impact, so he pulls his hand back quickly.

"I did," Rommath says. Rommath doesn't seem to want to look at him.

"And so?"

Rommath shakes his head. "And so this is the end of the path." Rommath keeps staring in Halduron's direction. The ranger-general's moans are steadily becoming more drawn out, and after a brief ripping sound, one of the succubi surrounding Halduron throws the torn shreds of his shirt over her shoulder.

Lor'themar averts his eyes. He didn't know Halduron was capable of making such noises either, but there's nothing Lor'themar can do for him now. He gracefully sinks to the floor next to the grand magister. "'The end of the path?' That's it? You want to just give up and die in here?" Lor'themar can't even believe it.

Rommath nods, still not looking at him. Halduron screams suddenly, a piercing agonized noise, but the sound just as quickly melts away into another extended moan. "Are they killing him, or changing him?"

Lor'themar can't think about Halduron. He can't. "You were much braver in Dalaran," Lor'themar observes, purely seeking a reaction, but Rommath remains detached, answering evenly.

"There was purpose then," Rommath says, peering into the tangle of limbs. "I can't do any magic in here. So that's that." He stretches the fingers of his dominant hand out as if checking one more time, but of course nothing happens. Rommath stares at his tensed digits for a second, the bone and muscle and flesh through which he channels so much power, and he sighs. "Don't tell me you can't see the difference between going up against Jaina Proudmoore's Kirin Tor--" Rommath infuses the words with abject disdain-- "--and going up against the Burning Legion." He looks back at the pile of demons, and his eyes follow a particular specimen's form with a mild intellectual curiosity; it's as much interest as Lor'themar's seen from him since they were captured. "Look, one's an incubus. You don't see them as often." As though they're spectators visiting at a zoo rather than trapped for entertainment themselves. One of the succubi watching them from the steps hisses, dissatisfied by their inaction.

"I don't accept that," Lor'themar says. He lays a hand on Rommath's narrow thigh and lowers his voice. "We might still have a chance. But we won't if you give up now."

Rommath first looks at him as though he's the shit of a hawkstrider Rommath's stepped in on the street, his upper lip pulling back from his teeth. He seems annoyed to have had to look away from the incubus in the mess of demon bodies where Halduron disappeared, glancing back for a moment and seeking with his eyes again. Then he laughs, a short sound. Then he starts to get angry. "Lor'themar. I won't ask twice. Take your hands off me."

"No," Lor'themar says slowly, but his voice grows firmer. "We fight." Instead of removing his hand, he reaches for Rommath with the other. "To our last breath."

"You idiot. That isn't fighting," Rommath snarls, all traces of his aloof demeanor gone, and the grand magister extends a leg for balance as he plants both hands on Lor'themar's chest and shoves. His ears flatten back against his head. "It's giving them a show before we die. At the expense of our dignity, I might add." But his barbed tone takes a turn, and his next words are not insulting, but despairing. "It's pointless, Theron. The city is taken. It's over."

Lor'themar doesn't allow Rommath to push him back far at all, and he doesn't let Rommath pull away, wrapping one hand around Rommath's wrist. Rommath glances at his hand and looks back at Lor'themar like he's gone insane, and maybe he has, but this whole night is insane, with a tidal wave of demons surging through the streets and sick green flames burning everything in Silvermoon. Lor'themar has always been one to change with the times as required. He'll do what's necessary now, what duty demands of him. He lowers his voice even further. "It's doing what we need to survive to fight. If I'm going to die tonight I want it to be on my feet sending one of them back to the nether, not burned alive in this ridiculous bubble."

Rommath sneers contemptuously, but there's more than a touch of amusement in the hauteur as well; Lor'themar has seen him wear this expression when a subordinate magister has said or done something that strikes Rommath as particularly stupid. "What makes you think they'll actually let us out?"

"It's our only chance." Lor'themar looks Rommath's body over appraisingly. Under other circumstances, he'd as soon try to fuck an Amani troll. But the planes of Rommath's face are elegant, his cheekbones high, his mouth a proud if irritated line. Rommath is not unattractive, not at all. Lor'themar only thinks of him that way because the grand magister has been a morose thorn in his side almost as long as he's been regent lord.

Rommath sounds both angry and uptight, and he tries to pull his wrist away. "No. I won't do it."

"Yes, you will," Lor'themar says, and he pushes Rommath flat onto his back. Rommath struggles and then they're wrestling. 

"Get off me," Rommath hisses, but strangely, Lor'themar has the sense Rommath's heart is not in resisting.

Lor'themar far outclasses him physically, in strength, weight, and muscle, and he holds Rommath down with his body while he puts both hands to the front of the grand magister's dress and tears it down the center, exposing Rommath's pale skin to the waist.

"You ripped my robes," Rommath says as if shocked, as if something like that matters at the end of the world. Lor'themar moves his hands down and tears Rommath's robes most of the rest of the way, and he forces Rommath's legs open. 

Lor'themar chokes off a scream when Rommath suddenly lunges up at him, buries his face under Lor'themar's chin and bites. Lor'themar wrenches away and feels his skin tear under Rommath's teeth.

He presses and holds Rommath down with a forearm over his throat. "You can conjure new ones," he breathes when the urge to shout and hit Rommath squarely in the face has passed, and he only feels the pain and the trickle of flowing blood at his throat. Rommath's nails scrabble along his arm but find no purchase in the mail shirt Lor'themar had thrown on when he woke to the sound of shouting.

He'd intended to follow the command fully, but there's no way he's getting aroused with the pain in his neck and an angry Rommath in his face, even with the erotic sounds Halduron's making somewhere behind them. Instead he rubs Rommath's groin with just a single layer of fabric between them. From outside the barrier, a delighted laugh is added to the aural backdrop of Halduron's moans and the fainter sound of screaming from outside the Spire. Lor'themar's startled, a little taken aback even, to find the grand magister's shaft half-hard. Lor'themar is self-assured in bed, always, but he's so surprised he falters for a moment. He recovers quickly and slips his hand under Rommath's smallclothes, beginning to stroke his flesh, skin to skin. Blood from Lor'themar's neck drips down onto Rommath's pale skin, an unsteady patter of scarlet droplets like chaotic red rain, falling without a pattern as he shifts atop the grand magister. He's lucky Rommath didn't get the artery.

Rommath looks furious, redoubling his efforts to twist away, his gold-lacquered nails clawing for Lor'themar's good eye, and his teeth snap again at Lor'themar's neck. Lor'themar barely draws his head back and pushes him back down in time. If Rommath had his spells, Lor'themar knows he'd be a living torch right now without the succubi having to lift a finger. But Rommath is next to powerless without his magic, without a weapon of any kind and facing someone so much stronger.

Lor'themar turns stern and lets the conversational tone fall away. "Stop struggling. That's an order." He says it in the cold, commanding voice of the regent lord, his official voice.

There's no reason for Rommath to obey him now, but with terrible suddenness, Rommath capitulates. He squeezes his eyes closed as Lor'themar touches him, letting his arms drop to his chest as his body goes limp. His hands fall side by side over his heart as if guarding it, and his ears droop as the resistance rushes out of him. Only his sex stays taut, hardening further under Lor'themar's hand.

With the grand magister lying quiet and still, Lor'themar shifts off to his side, so he's lying next to Rommath rather than on top of him. He has a sense Rommath would prefer that. He keeps touching Rommath as he leans down and whispers in the magister's ear. "I haven't seen any going into the translocation chamber. When--" _if_ "--the barrier goes down, run for it. I think you can get out."

Rommath opens his eyes and stares up at him, his ears rising up and outward a little. His hips thrust up under the stimulation from Lor'themar's hand, and he grimaces like he's aggravated by his body's response. "What about you?"

Lor'themar leans down to rest his chin on Rommath's shoulder and speak into his ear again, still stroking. Rommath's dark pinned hair feels soft against his forehead. "I intend to go down fighting, as I said." He squeezes Rommath's cock a little harder and a small sound escapes from the grand magister before he grits his teeth.

"I'm not leaving you and Brightwing here to die alone," Rommath mutters back.

Lor'themar's eyes flicker to the pile of bodies heaped towards the front of the room, and over the scattered corpses of guards who lie where they fell. Hardly alone--it won't just be him and Halduron. It's all of Silvermoon. Most of their people. Lor'themar had been determined, so determined, to bring the remainder of his people through, to see the sin'dorei restored to glory and fullness. But he's failed in his task to protect Quel'thalas yet again, and now before them lies an ignominious end. He tries not to think about it, because if he dwells upon that knowledge right now the weight of it will break him. He thinks instead about running his thumb hard and smooth over the head of Rommath's cock, because part of him wants to hear the choked sound he imagines Rommath would make, but he thinks about it a second too long and then refrains. Rommath seems to want to pretend that what's happening with Lor'themar's hand below his waist isn't happening at all, and Lor'themar has never, would never have used force this way but for this, now, with the entire world at stake.

"You will. You have to," he murmurs. "You'll need the distraction to get out of here. Go to Vol'jin, Wrynn, Sylvanas, Khadgar, all of them. If their cities haven't already fallen they have to be warned. This isn't over yet."

Rommath's expression darkens further. "Are you so eager to die, Lor'themar? I'll distract them, and you go."

"No. It has to be you." He's heard no more screams, at least, not from inside the room--the night outside the Spire is a symphony of screaming--and he suddenly realizes Halduron isn't moaning anymore. A lump forms in Lor'themar's throat, but he swallows and whispers hoarsely past the chasm of grief that threatens to rip him apart. "This is my last command. Your chances of escaping are better. You can teleport about, and you've a chance to reach far more of them than I'd be able to."

Rommath can't argue him there, and Lor'themar watches with sudden great fondness as Rommath searches for an answering argument and fails, frowning, because they both know Lor'themar's words are true.

Rommath's expression says he's wavering, at the peak point of either giving in or refusing, about to do one or the other, and Lor'themar tries to tip the scales his way, letting the faintest ghost of a smile touch his lips. "Do as I say, or I'll have you court-martialed." Such a threat is laughable rather than compelling at this point, but of course he means for it to be. Lor'themar has always found a moment of levity good before battle. The grand magister's mouth twists, because Rommath is not as mirthless as they say, and gallows humor is a kind he most appreciates.

Rommath sighs quietly and closes his eyes and lets Lor'themar stroke him, tighter and a little faster now. The muscles in the crook of Lor'themar's arm are beginning to tire, but it doesn't matter. Lor'themar keeps himself propped up on his elbow, watching Rommath's face and trying to gauge the pleasure of his touches. He gives into the urge to rub his thumb firmly over the head of Rommath's cock, tracing little circles over his slit and lower around the head and garnering another small groan. Despite his earlier words regarding the loss of their dignity, Rommath seems heedless of the other eyes on them. 

Before he climaxes, Rommath opens his eyes, looking up at Lor'themar with calm and unexpected deference and some small measure of new determination, and Rommath pulls Lor'themar's face down so their lips meet for the first and almost certainly the last time. His kiss goodbye is respectful, passionless, the kiss of a colleague, or enemies closer than friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a quote by William Booth - "The greatness of a man's power is the measure of his surrender."


End file.
